Quotes On Hit Songs

#1. Love makes the world go round, the hit songs collectively tell us, and the world is full of people you don't know and might as well be nice to because they won't leave.

Daniel Handler

#2. Just because you're a star on television doesn't mean that you can be a music phenomenon or an artist. You have to have the material to back it, and it's all about hit songs. I can name you every 'Idol' winner and why they didn't go on to have success - their songs. The ones who have - their songs.

Kara DioGuardi

#3. I love nothing more than to perform my songs in front of a live audience. And whatever I'm doing is driven toward finding or writing songs and putting out hit songs that drive people coming to see me live. Because, at the end of the day, that's what I enjoy the most.

Luke Bryan

#4. Some hit songs are really stupid, and who knows why they're hits. But a lot of hit songs are really good. I agree with Jim [Lauderdale] in that I think the really good ones are songs that when you hear it [sic] ... there's just something about it that touches your heart, and you don't know why.

Jorma Kaukonen

#5. Good new songs are the backbone of the music industry. There isn't an artist out there who could survive without hit songs.

Kara DioGuardi

#6. When John Lennon left the Beatles and started making music with Yoko Ono, many people scoffed at the idea. How could this talented man with so many hit songs give it all up? Well, we all know it was love, but beyond that, it was a leap of faith to try something new.

Ashley Bryan

#7. You know, I've always said, I've never felt I was a particularly good singer, but I've always thought I had a great knack for picking hit songs.

Kenny Rogers

#8. And frankly, when I made that record, hit songs were not what I was trying to achieve.

Duncan Sheik

#9. I really wish I knew what I was doing because I'd be writing hit songs every minute.

Bruno Mars

#10. It was a great thrill just to know Roy Orbison, so to play, sing, write hit songs with him and have him in The Traveling Wilburys was beyond my wildest dreams!

Jeff Lynne

#11. All the time I was writing hit songs with my partner David Porter, I always had the yen to perform. Sure did. And when the opportunity came, I took it. The first album, 'Presenting Isaac Hayes,' didn't do so hot, but it was like a prelude for what was to come.

Isaac Hayes

#12. It's really hard to write personal songs. I'm not good at writing ditties because as far as writing hit songs that you pitch to the national artist, I just don't write that way.

Emily Robison

#13. You can't explain the feeling of singing hit songs to an audience - it's like being a genuine sports star at the peak of their powers.

Rick Astley

#14. Smashing Pumpkins has never been a band about hit songs.

Billy Corgan

#15. Records are one thing, and obviously, without hit songs, you don't have the opportunity to do your shows. But my live show has always been my selling tool.

Jason Aldean

#16. There are a lot of people who really abused sampling and gave it a bad name, by just taking people's entire hit songs and rapping over them. It gave publishers license to get a little greedy.

Beck

#17. Hip-hop is more than music, it's a culture. It's bigger than hit songs.

Nelly

#18. No matter how much money I make, no matter how many hit songs. I still perform like a street performer.

R. Kelly

#19. We're all about trying to play better every night, not just singing hit songs ... we ad lib, and every night there's jamming .. it's almost like the Grateful Dead meets Buck Owens some nights, because we'll go off on little adventures and sometimes we do crash the bus! ...

Brad Paisley

#20. My approach is to be part of a band that makes music, not hit songs.

Adam Jones

#21. I hope somebody does this to all my crap demos when I'm dead, making them into hit songs.

George Harrison

#22. Hit songs did not come out of musicals. Pop-rock was creating the hits. There were very few songs that made the charts out of any Broadway musical.

Stephen Sondheim

#23. Starship was a whole different thing. It was pop rock. It made more money and had more hit songs than Airplane. There was no cultural or social ethic behind it. For me, it was like selling out. I was the only one selling out. The rest enjoyed doing what they were doing.

Grace Slick

#24. If you're a pop singer, you don't need to evolve. You just get a set together, have some hit songs and play them over and over.

Van Morrison

#25. Hit songs are mysterious and slippery beasts; few artists have a lock on them. This means that many people, like me, have become fans of songs rather than fans of artists.

Dan Hill

#26. I don't think people are fans of me because I wrote hit songs. I think they're fans because I'm a lunatic or a weirdo. The hit songs came out of my idiosyncratic personality, not the other way around.

Billy Corgan

#27. That's the perfect audience: singing along to every word, knowing the songs, appreciating the non-hit songs, stuff like that.

Dave Keuning

#28. When I began to cover songs for YouTube, they all tended to be in the super pop-genre.. as in, smash-hit songs. My writing process was heavily influenced by this - I went from a more heavy punk rock style to straight up sugary-sweet pop.

Alex Goot

#29. The solutions to my problems can be found in the songs she sends. I just have to hit the right note.

Alice Quinn

#30. I don't want to have one hit, one song of the summer, and then have me disappear forever. I really want my things to last, and I want my songs and my bodies of work to resonate with people. I want to hit people - at least make a dent in them. I want to make a mark somehow.

Alessia Cara

#31. I've always been trying to write songs that hit you in the stomach but ones that make people feel like things will be just fine.

Nathaniel Rateliff

#32. I don't think Flo Rida gets on just any song. If you look at the songs he has done - even The Saturdays one - was a hit. If it's not good enough, then he won't do it.

Olly Murs

#33. Actually, if I could deliberately sit down and write a pop hit, all my songs would be pop hits! Let's put it this way. I play what I like to hear. And sometimes I like to hear something poppy, and sometimes I don't.

Eddie Van Halen

#34. Whenever a songwriter writes a big hit, then the next 20 songs they write - no matter how bad they are - get recorded.

Ahmet Ertegun

#35. I did recording sessions as a musician as well as a background vocalist and enjoyed every minute of it. I remember singing harmony with Waylon Jennings on a few songs that were hits. Chet Atkins always put me up so high that I strained to hit every note. It was a lot of fun.

Ray Stevens

#36. I can play songs that I hear from a movie and just play it a few times on the keyboard. I will hit all the notes on the keyboard until I find the right key, and then I will play the rest of the song.

Callan McAuliffe

#37. I'll never be bothered if I don't have a hit because you look at the songs that are hits and they're none of my favourites. Just the fact that we do have fans waiting here, that's exciting enough.

Bert McCracken

#38. As much as I appreciate people putting me in the category of these very acrobatic belters, I feel like my strength is my ... interpretation and my truthfulness with songs, and I don't want young people to think it's all about the high notes that they have to hit.

Idina Menzel

#39. To me, racism is so played out and corny and stupid, especially in music, where you now have Nelly doing songs with Tim McGraw, on the hit single 'Over and Over.' Anyone who thinks about that just needs to get a life.

Clinton Sparks

#40. A lot of songs I sang to crowds to get their reaction. That's how I knew they'd hit.

Little Richard

#41. Melodies are far more interesting. They are there, in your face, in certain sections of the songs. People do complain about the melody thing, but we do hit patches of melody and beauty, as well as the other stuff.

Scott Walker

#42. You should listen to songs and listen to what works. Listen to why a song is a hit. Check it out-not to imitate it, but there are certain things that work-hooks and melodies. Hear what works through the ages.

Diane Warren

#43. I was never trying to write a hit. I was just trying to write good songs and get a message out, and it was my great good fortune to be popular.

John Denver

#44. I actually feel I'm in a much better place than I've ever been because I'm thankful people still love the songs that I've written, and they seem to like me. And they come to the shows in droves, and they get all excited, and I can still hit all the notes, and I don't look terrible.

Don McLean

#45. I know people who have written big hit country songs that are really kind of terrible songs, but for the rest of their life, they're the guy who wrote that. You've got to be careful; if you don't want that to happen, don't write those songs.

Jason Isbell

#46. A lot of artists go in the studio and say, 'OK, whaddaya want me to do? Is it gonna be a hit? I'll do it. Is it gonna get played on the radio? I'll do it.' So they start makin' these songs, and they fall in the same tempo, same category, same this, same that, and it'll just all sound the same.

B.o.B

#47. I like lots of songs, and I find it quite interesting to do [cover songs] from time to time. My first solo hit was in 1973, the [Bob] Dylan song "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall."

Bryan Ferry

#48. The demand in India is to have a hit, which becomes a promotion for the movie and makes people come to the theater. You have five songs and different promotions based on those. But when I do Western films, the need for originality is greater. Then I become very conscious about the writing.

A.R. Rahman

#49. Sometimes, I make 50 songs and pick out the best 10. I've been in the studio all day, all night, making the beat, writing the raps. You never know what's gonna be a hit.

Juicy J

#50. The Hank Williams Syndrome: Come to Nashville, write some good songs, cut some hit records, make money, take all the drugs you can and drink all you can, become a wild man and all of a sudden die.

Waylon Jennings

#51. I'm of Neil Young's generation. Neil Young's songs have spoken to what it's like to be at least a white male of his generation over the years. Endlessly, he's sung about the stuff that I really care about. He's put into words the feelings that hit you at different transitional moments in life.

Jonathan Demme

#52. I don't think songs have to be like these super-#1-smash-hit-sounding songs, because I think it's more important that it's like, 'Hey! This is coming out of me. This is something I connect with. This is something that I like to sing.'

David Archuleta

#53. I'm learning how to work my voice. I got some songs that you probably wouldn't even know it's me singing on there. I will sit there and take 20 takes until I hit that note right. It's different on stage - you've got to hit the notes that one time.

Dreezy

#54. I hate fame. There's this assumption that everyone wants it - that by being a musician, I've signed up for it at some point. But personally, what I signed up for is sharing my music. I've always said I'd rather have four No. 10 songs than one No. 1 hit.

Chet Faker

#55. The chorus of disapproval is like one of those formula songs that seem to hit number one all the time. You know the tune in a moment and it begins to bore you in two.

Melina Marchetta

#56. 'Battlefield' was one of those slow-building songs, the way 'Tattoo' was. It was kind of a word-of-mouth hit. The more people heard it, the more they started requesting it on the radio.

Jordin Sparks

#57. Social topics may hit too close to home for people, but then again, if you pull a heartstring, then that's what country music is. It's not just songs about getting drunk and leaving your girl.

Kenny Chesney

#58. You can make a hit song in 15 minutes. I don't know about someone else's song, but songs that people like of mine, I've created in 15 minutes or less.

Action Bronson

#59. I was both scattered and stymied, surrounded by unfinished songs and abandoned poems. I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations. And then I met a fellow who gave me his secret, and it was pretty simple. When you hit a wall, just kick it in. Todd

Patti Smith

#60. When I'm making songs, I never call them hits. I knew 'Bandz A Make Her Dance' was a good record, but I never knew it was gonna be a hit.

Juicy J

#61. My love songs are very personal and quite weird. They don't really have the big radio hit choruses because basically they're my therapy, stuff I have to get off my chest.

Ed Sheeran

#62. When songs fall from the sky, all I can do is catch them before they hit the ground.

Willie Nelson

#63. As far as spiritual influences in Christian music, I would say Crystal Lewis - a lot of her songs especially. The ministry she has through her songs has really hit me.

Stacie Orrico

#64. [Best original song nomination in 2016] should be Wiz Khalifa for "See You Again," but this is an amazing song and it's easily the biggest song out of any of the songs nominated. It was a huge hit. And really, I'm just happy for Weeknd as a person.

Bun B.